One Adoptee’s Anger Management

When I first began this blog several years ago I was hesitant to “speak” my mind. I was grateful to finally have a medium in which I could test the waters; for the first time to be able to write about what it feels like to be an adoptee and get feedback. Nowhere else had I ever found a supportive community of others who were doing the same–both adoptees and first parents. I’ve never felt much self-confidence in my life, so this felt terrific and liberating.

As I read other adoptees’ blogs I noted that 99 percent of them were polite, forgiving, gracious, and compassionate, in other words politically correct. As usual, I tried to conform. Political correctness is the standard everywhere. After all, you catch more flies with honey, as they say. And you never want to come across as being unhinged. If you are seen as unhinged, you are seen as an unpleasant sort with an axe to grind. Society will not stand for that. Get in line, march, and be pleasant about it! Since I began this blog I’ve learned that the entire subject of adoption is above all else political.

But here’s my question. Isn’t “political correctness” (not showing our true feelings; denying that we’re in denial) what’s gotten us into this miserable mess we call civilization in the first place? I spend time every month at an art faire where everything is permissible; it’s a chaotic free-for-all. People being what they aren’t allowed to be in every day life for just five hours each month. You’d expect there to be violent outbursts, fights, drunken debauchery, even murder. But nothing like that happens. People leave their money unattended in boxes on their vendor tables and no one touches it. Police presence is at a minimum for one evening. Traffic is blocked out. People drum, sing, dance, twirl, shout and laugh at our human condition. The truth is that liberation is exhilarating. By that I mean that the result is kindness, gentleness, generosity, unexpected joy, and beauty. Now to me that’s real therapy and subject for another post.

Sorry. Got carried away.

Anyway, even my polite (“politically correct”) online presence drew ire from commenters that accused me of being “psychologically disturbed” and that I needed therapy at worst (I can’t afford health insurance, sorry); or at best told me bluntly that I needed to “get over it,” “it” being my inherent adoptee’s rage. These confrontational comments caused my heart pound with a flight-or-fight panic.

See, as an adoptee, the one thing on earth that most terrifies me is confrontation and the threat of abandonment that it brings. I’ve always obeyed the directive to “manage my anger” and the rest of my messy emotions. But I suspect that emotions are what make us human, despite my undying admiration for fiercely unemotional characters like Gregory House on “House, M.D.”

Adoptees are, from the get-go, expected to conform politely in places where they have no idea how to conform or they could be “sent back.” I mean, how do you conform to the standards of people who call themselves your parents, but the truth is that they are and will forever remain strangers, despite their best intentions? This constant expectation from strangers produces some of the finest unrecognized actors on the planet. It also produces some of the most anxious (psychospeak: “neurotic”) people. When, for example, we feel rage, we must put on a smile and nod and laugh even when we don’t know why we should conform except to keep from feeling or being rejected; just to keep us in the “safe” zone.

By “safe” zone I mean that early on, adoptees learn to shield ourselves from any confrontation that holds that terrifying threat of rejection. We were rejected once, so we can be rejected again…and again…and again at any time. I can’t tell you how many relationships I’ve had that carried that same terrifying threat of rejection; how many times I’ve had sex with someone so that person wouldn’t reject me; how many times I’ve said “yes” when I felt “no”, just so someone wouldn’t reject me. Being an adoptee means being a child in a permanent state of separation anxiety, something I feel every day of my life.

Separation Anxiety Disorder is a disorder that affects children who are afraid to be separated from the main caretakers in their lives, even to go to a friend’s house or school. When separated, they are constantly afraid that something horrible will happen to either themselves or to their primary caretaker (they or the caretaker will die, for instance). When the subject of separating is brought up, the child begins to present with somatic symptoms ranging from headaches to nausea and vomiting, with anxiety.–from Mental Health Matters

Okay, so even non-adoptees must deal with societal doublespeak. “Everyone has problems,” writes the disgusted commenter (DC). “Just because you’re an adoptee do you think you have a right to whine any more than anyone else? No? Then SHUT…UP^®.”

See, but herein lies the crux of my argument. First, adoptees, wiped clean of their histories, are expected to take on all the doublespeak of strangers and JUST SHUT UP^® about it–like walking around in a volcano with duct tape over our mouths. Second, everyone has forever been told to JUST SHUT UP^® and be pleasant. Be grateful for what you have, we’re all told. Pretend everything’s okay. Put on that smiley face. You know the ubiquitous, meaningless conversation you have every stupid day of your life, the one with the cashier, postal worker, or bank teller, the one like two dogs smelling each other’s butts, the one that goes–

“How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good.”

Our cardboard masks can’t tolerate honesty. Honesty melts the seams. Honesty will get us immediately scrutinized and deemed “unstable” or “off our meds” or needing to be hauled off to therapy. Dude. I’m freaking SICK of “managing” my anger.

Here’s my shout to the entire adoption community about JUST SHUTTING UP^®. As Barak Obama famously said, ENOUGH!

Check out what these two adoptees wrote in a recent comment on the Pound Puppy Legacy. They are clearly in need of anger management, but they aren’t JUST SHUTTING UP^® any more. They tell it like it is.

Growing-up, I felt like there were so many within my afamily I had to impress and please, just so I could be liked, accepted and – I suppose in my own twisted way of understanding the dynamics of adoption – be kept. I felt like I had to prove to everyone I was worth something, even though inside I felt worthless and empty because I knew no one in my own family wanted me. In my case, this was especially difficult because I knew there were family members (within my afamily) who did NOT want an adopted child in “their family”. (It was like I was this disease element, cast away by some other (strange) family because they knew better than to keep the likes of me with them.)

There’s no luck or happiness when you feel like you are not wanted or liked by those surrounding you. There’s no joy knowing everything you do is for the sake and pleasure of everyone else. There is nothing to be grateful about when life becomes a silent emotional vacuum. My life became a fake display of perfection, and I hated it. And yet, I too had to smile and nod, as if being adopted was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So many people just didn’t understand how much the word “disappointment” surrounded me. It was the curse that kept me from feeling “grateful” towards anything.

The pressure to be more than “expected” went beyond home-life, too. I remember being teased in school, being told I was so ugly, I had the face even my own mother couldn’t love (as if that explained why she gave me away.). I would say back, “At least my parents wanted me so much, they saw my face, traveled to another country and chose me above all others; your parents got stuck with what they were given”. [Little did I know my aparents got a photo of the next child in line, and basically asked, do you approve or disapprove?] I thought my words would prove I was strong and proud and not at all ashamed to have been adopted. However, the truth has always been very simple in my mind: I deeply hated knowing no one (not one person!) in my own family wanted to keep me. I deeply hated living with people who had NO idea what it was like to be the outsider among those who were kept by their own family members. Good bad or indifferent, every one I knew had parents who didn’t send their children away, hoping some stranger would take that child in. How does that not hurt? In an orphanage, at least I would not have been alone. I would have been with other kids who knew what it felt like not to be wanted. In my own silent misery, I would have had company.

Instead, I lived with the terrible sad question and dread always digging at me: “There must be something very wrong with me, otherwise why would so many people want me to go away and be something different?” –Kerry

And the comment that followed:

I remember the very same words: What is wrong with me… but mine came from a biological home where I was the
stranger; only child; not a part of the other two people who lived in whatever house we had moved to, next.
I wanted so much to be around people who were called relatives, but we lived in another state and only saw them
once a year. To not be alone. I was always alone. [truer words were never written by any adoptee--me]

Kerry said: “I deeply hated living with people who had NO idea what it was like to be the outsider among those who were kept by their own family members.”

Living with people who were supposed to be your family and yet feeling like someone who was left on the doorstep; and
left with strangers who found me an unwanted intrusion. I can’t imagine your situation of being bought as the next child
in line, but I can imagine your deep hatred of those people who found you not to their liking. It destroys a child to think it
is all their fault. Outsider; always looking in at the others, going about their lives as if they belonged there. That’s how
I saw every other child and their families: they all belonged.
I wasn’t like you; I didn’t fake anything! I was not the perfect child who appreciated anything or did as I was told because
I wanted to please them. I hated them for not loving and accepting me so I would sneak and do everything they didn’t want me to do. There was no pleasure in doing it, only that I had defied the cold people I lived with.

Children in school can be so mean! Even in school I was treated differently because my mother would always make sure
they knew her opinion of me. I felt it because I knew what she had said and done. If she would have known about the
things I did to defy her, it would have been even worse. I tried to be the bad person she told everyone I was. They didn’t see it, they just believed it and treated me like my mother had described me. Her words were not extreme, yet she got the
point across. No one ever got-it, that she just didn’t like me.–Teddy

Beautiful un-managed anger!